Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I came across this cartoon from ten years ago. It is NOT one of those cartoons "that I could do today." Back in 1999 Jewish Fundraising went through its predictable seasonal cycles. The cartoon displays an amazingly "all's well in the world" ho hum attitude that is almost shocking.

Now, just ten years later we've had a market crash, an economic meltdown, and, as a poisoned cherry on top of the Ice Cream Sundae, we've had the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme ...which took out major Jewish philanthropies and major Jewish donors alike.

So in this year of 2009 things are very different from 1999. For info on what's happening in the world of Jewish Philanthropy I always check with eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

Monday, June 29, 2009

There seems to be a crisis-overload. There's so much to worry about that the mind just sort of fogs over, and when the Sun is the enemy, well, you just can't escape! So I figured I'd go for a laugh. Did I get one out of you?

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The world may or may not be witnessing a popular revolution in Tehran, but we are certainly witnessing a revolution in communications.

The Ayatollahs can expel the journalists and control the airwaves ...but they have not been able to stop the revolutionary technology that combines mobile phones that take photographs and videos, coupled with the Internet sites like Twitter to spread the word, and Flickr and YouTube to distribute the images to the rest of the world.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I used the story of "Nero fiddling while Rome burned" as the peg on which to hang my criticism of President Carter's appeasement of the Iranian hostage-taking at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution 30 years ago.

* * *

"Historians aren't sure if the emperor Nero really fiddled while Rome burned, but they do know that in A.D. 64 a conflagration destroyed about two-thirds of the city. The blaze broke out near the Circus Maximus stadium and raged for six days before it was extinguished. Once doused, the fire reignited and burned for three more days. Nero used the destruction as a reason to claim more than 200 acres (80 hectares) of the city center for the construction of an enormous palace and other projects satisfying to his own architectural tastes. Resentful citizens gossiped that Nero himself had sparked the fire." - more

Monday, June 22, 2009

A new and unstable element? The whole world is watching the Iranian post-election street demonstrations and I, certainly, am not willing to go out on a limb and make any prediction. But maybe you're braver than I am.

So what's your prediction about how the situation in Iran will develop? Will it reach "critical mass"?

Thursday, June 18, 2009

I did this cartoon thirty years ago. The Islamic Revolution had just taken place. Iranian students had taken to the streets to demonstrate ...and then, on November 4, 1979 the "Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line", invaded the U.S. embassy compound and seized its staff. 63 American diplomats and three other American citizens had been taken hostage. At the time that I did this cartoon they had been held for almost two months. It was December 1979, the month that the Ayatollah Khomeini became "Supreme Leader" of Iran. Incredibly, then-President Jimmy Carter chose to do nothing. It was Christmas, in the cartoon I mocked Carter's Christmas message to the hostages. Carter's appeasement earned him the disdain of those he sought to appease. The Iranians released the hostages minutes after Ronald Regan took the oath of office (having squashed Carter's try for a second term of office).

* * *

Thirty years have now slipped by. Iranian students are again demonstrating in the streets. Jimmy Carter is here in the region, still preaching appeasement. The leader of the Islamist students who grabbed the American Embassy back in 1979, is today, apparently, Iranian President Ahmadinejad. And I'm still drawing Dry Bones.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The plot unfolds, with all the "usual suspects" lining up against us again. And this time the American President has declared both an end to the "War on Terror" and to the quest to bring "Democracy" to the Middle East.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I'm tired of commenting on the current pressure on Israel to appease further "Palestinian" demands and decided to change the topic. So to find something different for today's Golden Oldie, I went way back to fifteen years ago this month ...

Monday, June 15, 2009

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu is our current man in the hot seat. Bibi's speech yesterday was in part, an answer to Obama's Cairo demand for a state for the "Palestinians". Other than Netanyahu's glaring failure to mention Jonathan Pollard it seemed pretty decent to me.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Last night I was a guest at the official celebration of the National Day of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which was held in Tel Aviv. The national anthems of Jordan and Israel were played. The assembled diplomats, journalists, businessmen, and "notables" chatted and enjoyed the food and drink. It was all very civilized. In his address, the Jordanian Ambassador to Israel noted that ten years had passed since the current monarch, King Abdullah II had ascended to the throne.

When I got back home from the reception I dug through my archives to find today's Golden Oldie. So here we are, ten years later, and the question asked in the cartoon has been answered. We had indeed made peace, not just with King Hussein, but with his kingdom.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The terminology that the media uses conveys so much! And we, the consumers of their news reports, are often so uninformed and/or unthinking that we swallow the hook embedded in the tidbits that they feed us. So it is that, on the West Bank, Jews live in "settlements" while Arabs live in towns, villages, and cities. And while we're at it there's the term "West Bank" itself.

Like most folks, I'm comfortable with "West Bank" as a neutral, innocent, geographical phrase ..while the use of "Judea and Samaria" is politically motivated and is what the "settlers" and right wing Israelis call it ...right?

Actually that's wrong! It's another rewrite of history that we've swallowed. Consider the following:

"They (Judea and Samaria) are the definitive and proper political and geographic names for the region and have been in general use since Clearchus, a disciple of Aristotle. These two areas have no other names. These names were used during the League of Nations Mandate period. They appear in British government documents, United Nations documents including the UN Partition Plan of 1947. They appear in U.S. State Department documents, including a July 18, 1948 map. Even as late as 1961, the Encyclopedia Britannica refers to “Judaea” and “Samaria” in an article on “Palestine” (Vol. 17, p. 118).

Trans-Jordan illegally invaded Judea-Samaria in 1948 and as a result of its aggression occupied that region. It then unilaterally annexed the area on April 4, 1950, which was recognized by only two nations, the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

The Arab League, their Muslim supporters, anti-Israel elements and anti-Semites, deliberately sought to rob the region of its correct political and geographic name. They had to fabricate a brand new name for they could find no other name for the territory. Mislabeling was their technique of disinformation and de-legitimization. The “West Bank” was the name concocted by King Abdullah I of Trans-Jordan and his British advisors, allowing the king to annex land outside of his artificially “created” kingdom. He then changed the name of his kingdom twice, first to “The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan” but that was quickly rejected since it gave the appearance of a kingdom only along the banks of the Jordan River. The name then was changed again to the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” The term “West Bank” eradicates all Jewish historical connection to the area. It is a sad commentary that many in the West, including the political left, many Israel’s supporters, some Israelis themselves, as well as the naive and self-delusional who think the name does not matter, have acquiesced to this unilateral change of names and use it in common parlance. But the name does matter." -more

Below: I've circled the Judea and Samaria regions on this detail of a French map of the area from 1791.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

An international conference on making the desert bloom got me thinking about the irrational hatred and demonization of Jews and the Jewish State. So was I right? Do we leave a medicinal taste in people's mouths? Are we a bitter pill for them to swallow?

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Click on the cartoon below to open a larger, more readable version of this full page Dry Bones Special:

Click on cartoon for larger version

Okay so the new and inexperienced President Obama thinks he can pressure Israel into taking his orders? Hey, we've had meaner guys in the White House who thought that they could twist our arms. Bush the father for example.

Back in 1991, George HW Bush tried to pressure our then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in order to appease the fig-leaf coalition of Arab states he had lined up against Saddam Hussein. This Dry Bones cartoon page offered the American President some suggestions on how to REALLY pressure Israel. As it was then, so it is now!

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The obvious anger in this cartoon was ignited by the local PR campaign that our Prime Minister has launched about his appointment of his "representative" for the return of Gilad Schalit.

What got me angry was that the Netanyahu government continues its silence on Jonathan Pollard, even as it publicly and proudly struts its concern about Schalit and secretly prepares its list of Palestinian convicts to release as part of an "exchange", which is simply paying ransom to kidnappers!

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Sunday), 31 May 2009, appointed former senior Mossad official Hagai Hadas as his special representative on the return of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hadas will be assisted by security establishment officials, Minister Dan Meridor and MK Yisrael Hasson; his work will be overseen by a special team composed of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Minister Yossi Peled, Minister Moshe Yaalon (and Minister Meridor and MK Hasson).".

Bibi's Press Release ends with:

"Shortly after Prime Minister Netanyahu informed Hadas of his appointment, Hadas contacted Noam Shalit, who is currently in the US, and told him of his appointment. Hadas said that Gilad Shalit and his family are at the center of affairs and that this was a moral mission of the highest order. He pledged to do his utmost to unite all relevant bodies and noted that, "We have a great obligation to our fighters and it is in the spirit of this commitment that I intend to act."

Question: When was the last time that a representative of the Israeli government contacted a member of Pollard's family to explain that obtaining Jonathan's release "was a moral mission of the highest order"?

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

After having been declared by many of his followers to be the Messiah, fifteen years ago this month, on June 12, 1994, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, died.

But to many of his Chabad-Lubavitch followers, his "apparent" death did not shake their belief that he was, and would soon reveal himself to be, "King Moshiach".

According to Chabadworld.net:

"In 1992, 175 leading rabbis around the world signed a Torah ruling stating that the Rebbe has satisfied the legal requirements to be Moshiach.

Following his apparent passing in 1994, some questioned whether the Rebbe may have lost his status as the presumed Moshiach. According to Judaism, Moshiach may come from the living or from the dead. Practically speaking, many Jews had trouble accepting that Moshiach can arise from the dead for numerous reasons ... "-more

Monday, June 01, 2009

Here in Israel, right now, we are having a massive civil defense exercise. The script assumes that we've been simultaneous hit by Hamas, Hezbollah, attacked by local Arabs, and bombarded by missiles. All of our hospitals, civil defense people, police, army, and the general public will take part in the exercise. Testing sirens, setting up road blocks, running to municipal bomb shelters, evacuating "the wounded".